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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Bragging on our oldest child

One of the things that I've loved most about living downstairs is that I can just let Agnes out. Meaning, I open the door and let her go outside. It's wonderful. I used to have to make sure Simon was ok where he was or when he was crawling make sure he was somewhere where he wasn't in danger of anything, walk Agnes down our steep stairs, open the door, walk around to the back, let her into the gate, wait while she does her thing, close the gate, unlock the door to go inside {you never know when a child-snatcher is coming by}, go up the stairs, hope to find Simon ok, and the process was finally over. Or to make it easier, I'd take him outside with me. Which is not so easy when it's 7 degrees and I have to make sure he's appropriately dressed for the whole 3 minutes he'd spend outside. Which doing all of that wouldn't be so easy with my ever-growing belly right now.

Our little backyard has three different gates that lead to the "outside world." They're generally all closed. A few months ago our schedule was a little out of sorts because Tom and my mom woke up super early to run a 1/2 marathon {go them!}. Agnes was taken out around the front and one of the gates was left open. So when I let her out later that morning, I assumed that all the gates were closed.

As I gathered Simon and our race-cheering gear to go cheer on the runners, poor Agnes was sitting by the front door, waiting for me to let her in. It made me immediately think about my poor parenting and not checking if all the gates were closed, but I was also filled with gratitude to have a dog who is so well behaved that even despite how depressed miserable she is living in the city, she'll come around and wait for us at the front door. She's had every chance to run away from us, but for some reason keeps coming back. I'm sure she would have knocked or rung the doorbell if she was capable.

Fast forward a few hours on that day. I let her out again. Didn't check the gate - that original gate was still open - and about an hour later found Agnes sitting by the front door. This dog, y'all, is the greatest. Her poor little life has been turned upside down by city-living and the bald-puppy we brought home almost a year and a half ago, but she still loves us the same {Tom - I'm sure there's a sermon illustration in there somewhere for you}. :) Don't tell her we're about to bring another bald puppy home in a month and a half and that her place on the Totem pole is about to fall a few notches again.